In 1985, two groundbreaking works of animation could be viewed, sometimes in the same hour, on MTV.
One was “Take On Me,” the A-ha video in which a woman (actress Bunty Bailey) gets yanked out of a café by lead singer Morten Harket and into a black-and-white animated realm where they fall in love and get chased by bad guys. The other was “Money for Nothing,” the Dire Straits MTV diss track that brought the two complaining blue-collar workers from the song to 3-D animated life.
The two videos demonstrate how creative and technologically ambitious videos had become halfway through the decade, a fact reflected the following year at the 1986 MTV Video Music Awards, where the two were the most nominated videos of the night. “Take On Me” earned 8 nominations and won six awards, while “Money for Nothing” received 11 nominations and won two Moon Men, including the big prize, Video of the Year.